Professor Geddes, in replying to the discussion, said he entirely agreed
with the point made by Mr. Swinny, and he should just like to correct
what he had said in his lecture by reference to what he meant by a civic
museum. In Edinburgh, he had in his museum a large room, with a
geographical model [Page: 118] of the old town with its hill-fort, and
so on; and he hung round this maps and diagrams of historical and
geographical details. On the opposite side of the room, he had a symbol
of the market-cross, which stood for the centre of its municipal life,
of its ideals and independence of environment. Around it was grouped
what represented the other side of the city; and here he might answer
another point, and say that they could never settle the great
philosophical controversy of determinism and free-will. They would
always incline when young to the novel of circumstance, and later, to
the novel of character, but they should always feel that life was a game
of individual skill with interfering circumstances. These diagrams of
his were only the page split. On the one side, he meant to push to the
extreme the idea that the place makes us, and on the other side, that we
make the place. By what process do men struggle towards the selection of
their ideals? They find themselves within the grasp of their
environment, their whole heritage of culture, of good and ill, the whole
tradition of the past; but they must select certain elements of
these--the elements that seem to them good, and so they might escape
from the manner of the city. Pointing to a drawing of the old Scotch
bawbee, Professor Geddes said it was not a very dignified symbol of the
coinage of the world, but let them mark how it had on the one side the
hammerman at his work, with his motto "_Beat deus artem_," and, on the
other side, a larger legend, with the eagle of the empire and the lamb
of Saint John.
To return to his civic museum: the room below the one he had described
was the larger museum for Scotland, and in the room below that, again,
the museum for England, Ireland and America, the whole English-speaking
world--not the Empire only. And the whole stood on a museum and library
representing that larger evolution of the occidental civilisation which
showed them they were merely children of the past. Professor Geddes
pleaded for museums in which every city displayed its own past and
present, but related itself to the whole of Europe and the whole
occident.
One or two practical questions of great importance had [Page: 119] been
raised; but, with all respect, he submitted that they could consider
what was practical and practicable without requiring to go into the
question of taxing land. That was a matter of political opinion. It was
as if they were discussing the geology of coal, which they could do,
without reference to coal royalties. Mr. Weymouth was with them on the
subject of preserving old buildings; and he thought there was a great
deal to be learned, if Mr. Weymouth would descend the valley of the
Thames once more. It was of great importance if he found a great city at
the tidal limit. Going down the Thames and the Tay, they would find, at
the last ford of one, the old Abbey of Westminster, and at the last ford
of the other, the old Abbey of Scoon. The kings of England and Scotland
were crowned there because these were the most important places--a point
of great historic interest. As a matter of practical interest, he might
mention that Scoon and Westminster alike passed out of supreme
importance when bridges were built across the river below; and he would
next point out how just as Perth became of subordinate importance when
the great Tay Bridge was built, so it became a tremendously important
question to London, as it might in turn be much affected by the making
of a great and a new bridge much further down the stream. This study of
the descending river had real and practical, as well as historical
importance. He had been about considerably in the great cities of the
United States, and had been struck by the amount of good endeavour
there. It was not, however, by denouncing Tammany that they could beat
it, but by understanding it. They must understand the mechanism by which
the Celtic chieftain ruled his clan, and they must deal with these
methods by still other methods; and they might often find it more
satisfactory to re-moralise the chieftain than to destroy him.
Professor Geddes concluded by saying that he appreciated the admirable
suggestion of Mr. Still towards the evolution of civic unions. He was
sure Mr. Still had there an idea of great significance which might be
developed.